Main ingredients
Leafy greens recipes
Spinach, kale, chard and cabbage.
Greens covers a wider range of behaviour than any other ingredient tag here: spinach collapses to nothing in ninety seconds, kale wants ten minutes and improves for being roughly handled, and bitter leaves like chicory need either heat or fat to become pleasant. What unites them is that most people undercook the tough ones and overcook the tender ones, and that almost all of them want salt and acid at the end rather than the start. The recipes here say which category a leaf falls into and give the visual cue for doneness, since the timings vary enormously with how young the leaves are.
15 recipes
Warm Farro and Roast Squash Bowl
Farro boiled like pasta and dressed while it is still hot, under roast squash, crisped kale and feta, so it eats as a meal.
Simple Green Salad
Nothing but leaves and vinaigrette, dressed the moment it goes to the table so it arrives crisp rather than limp and watery.
Sauerkraut
Cabbage and carrot salted, packed down and left to ferment under its own brine until it turns sour and keeps.
Egg Fried Rice
Yesterday's rice broken up cold and fried hard in a wide pan, so the grains stay separate and toast instead of steaming to paste.
Crunchy Cabbage Slaw
Shredded cabbage salted and drained for an hour first, so the mustard dressing stays thick instead of thinning to a puddle.
Creamed Spinach
Wilted spinach squeezed bone dry before it meets the cream, which is the whole difference between this and a puddle.
Chickpea and Spinach Stew
Dried chickpeas cooked from scratch and thickened with fried bread pounded to a paste, which is how Seville gets body without cream.
Braised Red Cabbage
Shredded red cabbage cooked slowly with apple, vinegar and spice, the acid going in early so the colour stays bright.
Beef Chow Mein
Beef coated in cornflour and seared in batches in a pan hot enough to smoke, with the sauce going in only at the very end.
Saag Paneer
Spinach cooked down to a dark, silky base with ginger and green chilli, with cubes of fried paneer folded through at the end.
Pirozhki
Small yeasted buns filled with cabbage and egg, baked or fried, sized to be eaten out of the hand in two or three bites.
Minestrone
A chunky vegetable soup built on a slow soffritto, with beans and small pasta simmered in the broth so it thickens as it stands.
Golubtsy
Cabbage leaves rolled around seasoned mince and rice, then braised slowly in tomato and soured cream.
Garlicky Greens
Greens wilted in garlic oil in a single wide pan, on the table in under ten minutes and the default side for almost anything.
Borscht
Beetroot and cabbage soup built on beef broth, with the grated beetroot added late and with acid so it stays red.